A survivor's guide to teenage parenting involving rabbit feet, four leaf clovers and going to Church on Sunday.

Monday, 20 September 2010

If The Grown-up Kids are united...

I remember the day because I am old, but not that old, when we chanted a la cockney, a la Jimmy Pursey, a la Hersham Boys. We were kids and for a chorus or three, we were united in harmony of chanting "If the kids are united we will never be..... "Although harmony in singing terms may be a little bit disingenuous.

And some twenty... maybe thirty years later I chant a new lyric "If the parents are United, They will never be Divided", which as an Intro of sorts brings me to rules of teenage parenting.

Pre-rules Guidance - the cute days are over until they follow one into parenting and the patter of little feet will become their teenage timebomb.

Rule 1 in front of a teenager, my wife is right even when she is wrong. And telling my boy five -six times to do his teeth starts grating even mine especially when the decibel level does not crescend to its operatic peak it just starts at its peak and stays there. I have sggested quietly a please may help at first shout.

Rule 2 in front of a teenager hubby cannot do no wrong even when rambling, picking nose or generally not doing his fair share of the housekeeping even when asked with or without a please.

So I cocked it up. An occasion I lapsed. I am sorry.

I thought I was witty, I had an irresistable urge to be as sarcastic as a Cheshire cat with whiskers on.

To set the scene, we had our starting orders, TV was on, food was on laps via plates or trays, News was being digested faster than a fast food meal, every fifteen minutes in fact, a teenager was doing what teenagers do, something between nothing and about to do something and in this case it was humming badly to what may have originally have been a good song. The Gulf was failing to escape the oil, and it was a major story headlining every fifteenth minute of my life.

I was away with the fairies having understood the story first time round, I was now neverminding the nirvana of it all, when up pops a foxy TV fellow again intent on headlining the oily mess as a universal example of how to win the ratings war ~ a reporter of objectivity and the objective was developing "interest" by emphasising this was a crime against Mother nature and US Mother Nature at that. He informed the spillage that was endangering life as we know it, because it had a US coast to coat and with graphic details of a super terrific terrible things going wrong, he prodded the oil in the sand with journalistic disgust and respect for camera angles.

Wifey decides that this is too much for the cleanliness gene that cannot remember a student bedsit that may have told another story, she was indignant.

"Whose going to clean that up?"

It may have been slightly funny, but funny is wrong when breaking rule 1. United we stand divided we fall. The perch was in danger of supporting a dead oil feathered parrot in free fall to a murky deepwater grave.

I entered the fray like a stupid divvy that a laugh was worth the risking the alliance of the North Atlantic Parental Organisation. I said, I regret deeply it now, "I believe he has a wife "

A Teenager was hum-less , enjoying the chink in the parental armour, smirking at the civil war about to commence.

He entered the fray that "BP can clear it up" as a strap line played across the bottom of the TV screen. He was better than us- environmentally right on. He was correct. I was witty.

At least "you proved you can read" I said.

"What?" he said

"But your hearing is still not too good then", I also said. I was on a roll.